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Building Your Business
the lion's share of the market is in the mouth

by Jean Bailey

Many aspects of marketing a small business get a lot of attention: advertising, public relations, direct mail and websites, just to name the big ones. The truth is most of these may not actually bring in the lion's share of your business. So what does?

As it turns out you've probably always been using it and may not have even given it a thought, much less have realized it's integral to the marketing of your business. Perhaps you haven't considered this element because you thought you had little or no control over it. So what's the 3,000-pound elephant in the room no one mentioned? It's word-of-mouth marketing, and people are mentioning it now.

Some may not even think of word of mouth as true marketing because "marketing" implies conscious, creative control of all aspects of consumers' perceptions. There was a time when it was thought these perceptions of brands and products were controlled solely by the messages in advertising and the celebrities who endorsed them. But in our new information age it's the consumer who has wrested control of the message from the traditional marketers, and things will never be the same. The Internet, blogs, YouTube™, Amazon's® review system and eBay's®buyer ratings have shifted the power to the hands of the everyday usersof products. And consumers are filling the Internet and using their cell minutes to share their personal user experiences.

The messages consumers share with each other carry more weight with their fellow consumers because everyone knows they get no compensation for loving a product- the groupies who love their Macs and Apple Computers- and no penalty for hating products-cable TV companies and phone service providers. Consumers' personal truths are being put out there and are emerging as the most powerful persuaders in the marketplace today. In fact, a whole new association has been created around it called The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (www.womma.org), dedicated to this important element of marketing. Its focus is on giving businesses some control over word of mouth and a lot of ideas on how companies might harness this new method.

One new voice in this unexplored wilderness is Andy Sernovitz. Sernovitz was instrumental in founding this new association and has just come out with a new book to further evangelize this medium, Word-of- Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. In this book, Sernovitz's defines word of mouth clearly and simply: "Giving people a reason to talk about your stuff and making it easier for that conversation to take place." His process for word-of-mouth marketing involves four simple rules:

1. Be Interesting

Being interesting is as easy as capturing someone's attention, making someone smile or just surprising people in a pleasant and unique way. How could these relate to a massage therapy practice? It could start with a great name for your business. For example, "Runner's Edge," a massage therapy practice dedicated to individual runners and tri-athletes. Or it could be the red PT Cruiser you drive to home appointments with the magnetic message sign attached to it declaring "Massage Therapy-Free Home Delivery," with your business phone and/or your website address prominently plastered all over it.

Or it could be how you might combine your massage therapy business with your other interests and passions. Some concepts explored by my brilliant students included massage therapy and Thai cooking classes. This student was from Thailand and developed an incredible hybrid of American and Thai massage techniques. He loved to cook and shared some tasty treats with special clients. The next thing he knew, he had a fascinating new business model and a whole lot of clients talking about it.

Another massage therapist was a delivery coach for pregnant women. She also had a strong creative talent, which led her to combine belly painting and belly masks-plaster of Paris impressions of pregnant bellies painted and mounted for a client's wall-into her massage specialty. It created quite a stir and quite a story.

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